Bacon's Rebellion

Recently I semi-promised to track Mayor Doug Wilder’s budget cutting proposals in the City of Richmond. One of the items Wilder proposed to cut was the city’s participation in The Greater Richmond Partnership (GRP), a regional economic development group that includes Chesterfield, Hanover, and Henrico counties. The annual savings to the city would be $390,000.

Before Wilder’s formal budget submission, some in Chesterfield County also proposed withdrawing financial support. The GRP has just released their response to Chesterfield. Snoopy over at River City Rapids says the response is a slam-dunk justification of the value of the GRP: $195 returned for every dollar Chesterfield spent.

Not so fast. The GRP response is a sharp, glossy document, as befits a first-class organization. Such an impressive format lends credence to its main point: “All told, in ten years in Chesterfield, GRP has been involved in bringing 71 companies, 6,700 jobs, and $651 million in taxable capital investment.”

What does “been involved” really mean? Time and again, the GRP says it “helped” or “assisted” in all this economic development activity. Just what was the nature of all this “help” and “assistance?” The GRP doesn’t say. There are no examples of what the “help” was for any individual project, so it’s hard for anyone outside the insular world of economic development to judge if the “help” could have been provided at a lesser cost. The awards touted by the GRP were mostly bestowed by economic development organizations; the accolades from economic development consultants with a vested interested in praising the GRP.

My point is that if the GRP provides a similar document to the City of Richmond in an effort to retain city funding, I would expect the wily Wilder and his sidekick Paul Goldman to be a little more incredulous than Snoopy. There’s a case to be made for all Richmond localities to continue providing financial support, but it needs to be more than “good things happened, we helped.”

The larger question, for the state as a whole, is this: “Would economic development occur without economic developers?”

We all know that Professor Larry Sabato hosts officeholders and office-seekers in his University of Virginia political science class; his Center for Politics puts out press releases and invites the media. Lt. Gov. Kaine has already appeared with Sabato; Jerry Kilgore appears tomorrow. Less well-known and less-reported are appearances in other Virginia classrooms.

One of my day job colleagues, the delightful Heather McDonough of Mechanicsville, is taking a night class at VCU. When she told me Jerry Kilgore had addressed the class yesterday, I asked her to give me her impressions of him as a candidate. She agreed to dash something off and I present it here, unedited except for some paragraph breaks, as a non-blogger’s take on the presumptive Republican nominee:

As part of my Political Science class at VCU (Virginia Government and Politics-POLI 323), taught by Bob Holsworth and Don Baker, Jerry Kilgore stopped by last night to discuss his political career and the current Governor’s race. Maybe it was the university setting, but he seemed a bit ill at ease when he first arrived. Despite his seeming wariness, he did warm up to the class and came off as a genuinely nice guy.

We did discuss his accent in class, and how it would play in the campaign, and we couldn’t reach a consensus. Several classmates thought it would hurt him, especially in Northern Virginia. Others thought it would actually help him, myself included. Even though I’m a pretty staunch Democrat, I’m a Southern girl first, and there’s something about a Southern twang that strikes me as appealing and trustworthy.

I was quite impressed with Kilgore’s skill in maneuvering the discussion back to his main issues – the “10 days of reform” he’s been announcing on the campaign trail. He talked about the “better pay for better teachers” initiative, and he explained that it was a way to reward those “impact teachers” that everyone recognizes as the best (which would also be much cheaper than a sorely needed across-the-board pay raise). Besides, what teacher is going to say no to a guy who wants to give them more money? He’ll be tackling domestic violence as well, with an initiative of mandatory jail time for those who violate protective orders, ranging from 5 days for the first violation to 90 days or more after 3 violations.

While the class seemed impressed with his vision, several students did raise the question of how he was going to pay for all these new programs. This launched Kilgore into several minutes of explaining his plans for economic development in the Commonwealth, as he told us that he had signed a “no tax” pledge before his campaign for Attorney General which was “still in effect” and that he did not think we would need to cut programs provided the Commonwealth could strengthen economic development. He mentioned his plans for partnerships between research universities and private enterprise to gain access to federal dollars for research, which would help both the universities themselves as well as economic development in the surrounding region.

Overall, I really liked Kilgore and thought he seemed like a nice, down-home guy. I really hope he can overcome some of the stiffness and seeming unease in front of a crowd, because he has some really good ideas. I also hope that his campaign doesn’t put out any tv ads in Northern Virginia that feature him talking. I just don’t know how his accent is going to play up there. I guess it just felt like he was really on his guard and in “campaign mode,” and I’d rather have seen him let his guard down a bit.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, Lt. Gov. Kaine won’t be able to speak with Heather’s class, so I won’t be able to offer equal time.

Update: Commonwealth Conservative has a report on what Jerry was doing before his appearance in Heather’s class.

Loudoun-ize: verb meaning to overrun an area with residential building because you are an elected GOP official in the pocket of developers. H. Clark Leming, a land-use attorney, discusses charges that Stafford County is being “Loudoun-ized” in this Free-Lance Star op-ed.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

–Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Political Thinker

[Kaine]responded to a student’s question about corruption on Richmond City Council, on which he once served, by saying that it was chiefly caused by the refusal of people in the city’s big law firms and major companies to run for City Council.

–From Patrick McSweeney’s latest in Bacon’s Rebellion

Margaret Edds’ Virginian-Pilot column went online too late for today’s Virginia Pundit Watch. Ms. Edds offered her take on the General Assembly veto session dust-up over Sen. Russ Potts. That dust-up led to Phil’s RINOS on Parade, producing one of the most interesting and voluminous comment threads ever seen here on Bacon’s Rebellion. It included contributions from one of the legislators at the center of the action, Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax.

Edds makes no bones about where she stands:

Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, aligning with moderate Republican senators, saved the Virginia GOP from embarrassment at the hands of its anti-government ideological wing.

Potts’ reprieve may have disappointed party activists understandably miffed at the Winchester renegade’s run for governor as an independent Republican. But the alternative, in my view, meant elevating Potts to martyrdom while trumpeting a philosophical split.

She goes on to quote several Potts pot shots, including his calling the car tax relief plan (that he voted for!) a “cockamamie idea.” She also weighs in on the possible Potts effect:

My guess is that Potts’ straight talk will wind up costing both Kaine and Kilgore votes, probably somewhat equally. Every time irate Republicans burnish his maverick image, they add to the tally by illuminating his platform and his campaign.

If Potts had more of a platform and a more visible campaign, I might agree with her. The Potts campaign I see is only about his “maverick” press clippings.

Update: No one person can keep up with the Potts juggernaut. Norm over at One Man’s Trash links and comments on a Chris Graham mini-interview in the AFP with Virgnia’s most dangerous candidate.

I’m not one to regularly quote the Washington Post, but Sunday’s editorial by Melanie Scaborough really draws the distinction in the ideologies of the Political Parties and clearly shows why the Democrats have lost their majority status in our State.

This Op-Ed examined the legislative bills proposed by both Democrat and Republican members of the Northern Virginia Delegation. It gives credit to Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R- Fairfax, for having “sponsored some of this year’s most common-sense legislation – including a bill that would tie the growth of state spending to population plus inflation.” (Emphasis added)

This is commonly referred to as the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) and it’s modeled after the Colorado law that is widely credited for controlling government spending in that state and for returning billion of dollars to the tax payers in the form of permanent tax cuts. Of course such legislation is anathema to the tax-and-spenders in the State Senate, including a good percentage of the Republican majority, as it would deprive them from the ability to squander taxpayer dollars on pork barrel from which they derive their political power.

The article concludes by making this very insightful observation:

If Northern Virginia liberals believe it is a moral imperative to pay high tax rates, why not live in Washington instead of lower-taxed Virginia?
They send to Richmond representatives who vote for the sort of policies that ruined the District — and from which Virginia suburbanites have tried to escape.

The Daily Press has a big story today on the pay of the Executive Director of the Virginia Port Authority. The General Assembly alloted $127,615 for the post but Gov. Warner and the Port Authority Board set the pay at $275,615 without following procedures outlined in state law.

This is not a big deal–it’s a big job and the salary is apparently competitive–but it’s another example of the tin ear some in the Warner Administration have about pay and perks. It’s the “we took a pay cut to join state government” mentality. The Port Authority Board has now promised it will hold public hearings on future pay raises for the Executive Director.

Del. Vince Callahan, R-Fairfax, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, got it right: “I don’t have any problem with the board paying him a competitive salary, considering what these football and basketball coaches are making. But we have created certain guidelines and provisions. If they don’t follow them, they’re on tenuous ground.”

Becky Dale pointed me to this news story in the Manassas Journal Messenger. Despite all the talk about rising real estate assessments and homeowner unrest, Prince William County has apparently not seen any increase in the number of calls to its assessment office. Could this be less of an issue than either Kaine or Kilgore imagined?

If you’re into media watching and substance, you can read One Man’s Trash right now or you can read Virginia Pundit Watch tomorrow in the new issue of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. Or you could do both.

When bloggers aren’t chasing the same political story, they’re gazing into their collective navels on the subject of blogging.

Prolific Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press recently did a widely linked story on Virginia blogging’s potential impact on this fall’s election, including interviews with John Behan and Rick Sincere. A companion piece should be this Jack Schaefer article in Slate. Schaefer, who’s been in the media criticism business longer than any blogger, praises blogs for opinion writing and compares them to mainstream journalists this way:

To stretch a manufacturing analogy, unsalaried bloggers represent low-cost Chinese laborers, professional journalists the well-paid-with-benefits American workers. Given the right tools and infrastructure, low-cost Chinese labor can produce work that is every bit the equal of the high-price kind. What the Web has done is remove the barriers to entry from opinion journalism, much to the benefit of readers.

GOP gubernatorial candidate George Fitch has finally garnered some ink in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, although the lead of today’s article by Tyler Whitley could not be what he was hoping for: “Fitch struggles for recognition in his GOP bid to be governor”.

Fitch has loads of ideas for cutting costs and taxes, Whitley wrote, but he can’t get them out because he lacks money and a campaign organization. The Warrenton mayor “soldiers on, usually driving by himself in his Ford Taurus, talking with whomever will listen about ‘the Warrenton miracle.’ While Kilgore has raised more than $5 million, Fitch has raised only $140,000 — mostly from his own pocket.

Given the anti-tax fervor of the Republican rank and file, I’m amazed that Fitch has attracted so little support. It does seem likely that Fitch will get on the primary ballot, at least, so Republicans will at least be able to register a protest vote against the Business As Usual wing of the GOP.

Dear Bacon’s Rebellion Bloggers,

I have been gratified by the response to the Bacon’s Rebellion blog. It has more than fulfilled my hope that it would become a forum for the exchange of perspectives on issues of importance to Virginians. The quality of the commentary has been high, and participants have largely honored the spirit of collegiality that I would like to maintain. Even though we often disagree–and disagree vigorously–we can debate facts and logic without engaging in ad hominem attacks.

The Bacon’s Rebellion blog started as an experiment, just to see what would happen. In just a couple of months, the blog clearly has become something worth building upon. Unfortunately, as popularity has increased, we seem to be running into bandwidth problems. A number of participants have experienced difficulty posting and commenting on the blog. Blogger is fine for a free service, but, let’s face it, you get what you pay for. My first priority is to migrate to a superior blogging platform.

If anyone can suggest a superior blogging service that charges reasonable rates, please let me know. Also, if any of you can recommend particular features that a good blogging service should have, please let me know.

Jim Bacon
Publisher
Bacon’s Rebellion

Courtesy of the Sic Semper Tyrannis blog, you can listen to the audio file of the Senate debate on ousting Potts from his committee chairmanship.

Listen to Senator’s Sasslaw and Norment coming to the rescue of their embattled breathern, the “Independent Republican.” I can understand Sasslaw, who is an unabashed liberal. But Norment ran as a conservative Republican and has spoken against Potts’ independent run.

Obviously, Kaine, the Democrats, and the RINOs must be convinced that Potts’ candidacy will detract votes from the Republican candidate in November. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be going out of their way to protect Potts…

Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder’s budget proposal, cutting or eliminating funding to a number of identified economic development, cultural, and historic organizations, offers this blog debating society a little laboratory in which to test our beliefs about government.

Richmond is the capital city, so everyone in the Old Dominion has something of a stake in the city’s budget. The city has a major newspaper that we expect will cover developments thoroughly. There are city blogs like River City Rapids that will provide additional insight, as it has already. The manageable number of organizations that have been cut represent a good cross-section of the types of things government funds. Several of the organizations facing cuts are high-powered, with friends in high places, so they will have the wherewithal to make their case in the media as well as in the proverbial backrooms.

How much of Wilder’s cutting will those who fulminate against government spending in the abstract accept? How will those who generally favor more spending and more government justify these programs? I think it will be interesting and I invite my colleagues and all our readers to follow developments and test our commitments on this real world example.

What is the Potts for Governor campaign up to? Until now, it seemed to be based exclusively on the media’s fascination with Republicans trying to oust Potts from the party. While that’s “good copy,” as they say, I’m rather old-fashioned, believing a campaign ought to be about the candidate, his or her ideas, and his or her organization. I’ve been scanning the news for some dispatch that might illuminate any real substance in the Potts campaign

As if in answer to my prayers, an April 6th Brian McNeill story in the Fairfax Connection sheds a keyhole-sized light on the Winchester Senator’s ideas and progress.

Potts has priorities and a hierarchy of values:

Should Potts be elected governor, one of his top priorities would be to overhaul the state’s tax code, which has not been comprehensively revised since 1938. By ensuring all Virginians are paying their fair share, he said, revenue could be generated for long-term transportation and education solutions.

He also said that he, unlike Kaine or Kilgore, is open to increasing the gas tax, which has remained at 17.5 cents per gallon for nearly two decades.

“I hate taxes, but I love Virginia more,” he said.

He doesn’t think much of the Kaine and Kilgore proposals to help lower local real estate taxes:

“I’ve seen this whole no-tax, no-roads, no-schools, no-hope vision play out,” he said. “They’re adamantly opposed to any investment in Virginia.”

The Potts organization appears to humming right along. They have collected “roughly” 5,000 signatures to get him on the ballot.

McNeill’s apparent take? “One thing is certain. Potts plans to stir things up over the next seven months.” That view is based on this Potts observation and declaration: “The most dangerous candidate is the one who isn’t afraid to lose. Believe me, I’m not afraid to lose.”

Tax-happy warrior Potts indeed poses a danger, but right now I’d say it’s more to his own campaign’s viability than to Kaine or Kilgore.